Hearing aids are used to restore or to improve the hearing capabilities of people with hearing impairments. Whereas earlier hearing aids were frequently designed only as amplifiers for all ambient noises around the hearing aid user, modern hearing aids are able to filter and amplify the noises according to the individual requirements of the hearing aid user. The use of digital technology in particular opens up enormous possibilities in this field. A hearing aid must be programmed using an external control device with the hearing aid acoustician in order to adjust it to the individual requirements of its user. By playing audio examples to the hearing aid user, it is possible to conclude how effective the existing hearing aid settings are and whether a further adjustment of the hearing aid is required. In future, audio examples can be input via the programming device. However, until now they have been and probably still will be in the future predominantly played back via an external loudspeaker system.
Until now hearing aids have been connected directly to the programming device or to an interconnected device, e.g. a remote control, almost exclusively by means of a special cable, for programming. Thereby a cable connection is provided for each hearing aid respectively. The individual cabling ensures that the assignment of the hearing aid in the programming device is unequivocal and therefore each connected hearing aid can be responded to individually. A separate cabling is particularly necessary when programming pairs of hearing aids (binaural coverage), as in this case it may be necessary to make different settings for the right and the left hearing aid.
If, however, the connection of the hearing aids to the control device is carried out completely wirelessly, then problems can arise in particular in the connection setup, as here to start with the hearing aids are not assigned unequivocally. Right from the start the programming device does not have the knowledge as to how many hearing aids are present and if a pair of hearing aids are to be programmed, possibly also the knowledge as to which of the hearing aids present are meant for the left or the right ear. Therefore, a method of recognition with whose help the hearing aids present can be unequivocally assigned is necessary in particular for the programming of pairs of hearing aids realized via a wireless connection made via the same radio channel.
The problem of there being no assignment of hearing aids in a control device can, however, also arise e.g. during the function test and pre-adjustment of the hearing aids directly after their manufacture, as it is precisely here that a large number of hearing aids are tested or pre-adjusted at the same time. Since the control device must know both the number and also the identity of the individual hearing aids in order to carry out a function test, until now the hearing aids for these test and pre-adjustment procedures have to be connected manually to the control device via cable connections. If, however, the connection of the hearing aids to the control device is to be done using a wireless connection, then a procedure for recognition using which the control device can recognize the number and the identity of the hearing aids present must also be provided.